The re-union of opposites

If it is somehow inappropriate for me to welcome the emergence of the South African intersex athlete as a wild card disturbing the cosy social and political divisions of gender (which a large number of people seem to require for their ontological security), I must return to the iconography available in the Hindu figure of Ardhanisvara, who is the presiding deity of this blogspot, as an archetype that adroitly manages to reconcile the opposites.

In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald,

“The true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.”

If a force is introduced with the intention to divide what is whole, creating separation and division, it also produces a counterforce, which is the desire for reunion.

I draw your attention to the lovely gesture of greeting used by people in certain Eastern traditions, who press the palms of the hands together – the right and the left meeting equally, with the head bowed – when meeting one another. The bow of the head acknowledges that, beyond the division of self and other, you and me, right and left, male and female, there is an over-arching (or underlying) principle of unity that can contain and resolve the apparent separation.